


The Prodigal Zel

by MotherInLore



Category: Slayers (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Family Issues, Ghosts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-05
Updated: 2016-04-05
Packaged: 2018-05-31 08:20:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 19,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6462835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MotherInLore/pseuds/MotherInLore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Shortly after the end of E/R, Zel visits his hometown for the first time in ages.  He was prepared for the bad memories.  The legacy of a conman known as "Fitz the Face," and another piece of unfinished business from Rezo, not so much.  Rated Teen for "mild thematic elements;"  most of the really squicky stuff happened years ago, offscreen, and is only mentioned or implied in passing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Overtures

_To the Lady Dowager Yvonne Greywords-Pikestaff,_  
_Pikestaff House,_  
_Grey Harbor, Camazind_

Honored mother,

First, please allow me to apologize for my great failure in taking this long to let you know I am still alive. The five or six years since I last wrote have been eventful ones, but not so much so as to offer any excuse; I was just thoughtless. I had become involved in a matter of some urgency to me, that I believed would be handled quickly, and when it was not I failed to notice how much time was passing in my quest.

However, I recently ran across some other people who had been acquainted with Rezo, and I have been remembering many things. So, I am writing. 

I hope you are well, and that your other sons have been treating you with far more consideration than I did. And Stepfather too, of course. A letter to Seyruun castle will reach me, though not necessarily quickly, since my habits still tend toward the vagabond. Shall I visit, if I happen to wander in the direction of Grey Harbor?

Your wayward son,

Zelgadis

 

 _To Zelgadis Greywords_  
_Seyruun Castle,_  
_Seyruun City, Seyruun_

Dear son,

Of course you must come visit! I cannot entirely blame you for forgetting to write, under the circumstances. Our correspondence had been a matter of form for some little time before it ceased, had it not? Your older half-brothers are alarmed, however, since they were under the impression you died when your grandfather did, and have been taking steps to redistribute your portion of the Greywords inheritance. Are you in need of money? An address at a castle sounds as though you at least have employment of some sort. 

At any rate, I hope you are not without friends, and if you find yourself in need of more of them, we wait here in Grey Harbor.

Yes, Sir Pikestaff and I continue well and happy, and so do the children. I don't think Gulbadan had been born yet when you lost contact with us? She is just five now. Asmir is as tall at eleven as you were at twelve, and very fond of horses; he remembers you a little and asked me if you were “still scary,” but he has been reading anything he can find about Seyruun in the library since then, and Dmitri copies him.

Yours,

Mother

 

 _To the Lady Dowager Yvonne Greywords-Pikestaff,_  
_Pikestaff House,_  
_Grey Harbor, Camazind_

Dear Mother,

No, I am not in need of money, thank you, and yes, Prince Philionel has been a generous patron to me. You can tell Xanderbald (I assume it was Xander and not Zebulon who was concerned about the money) that I will sign whatever paperwork they need to relinquish my claim on the property. It was always understood that Rezo would be seeing to my prospects when he took me on, and so he did, in a manner of speaking.

I will be sailing toward Camazind on the _Lookfar II,_ due to arrive between the 28th and the 37th, and I look forward to seeing all of you then, including the ones I haven't met yet.

I should warn you, one of the things that has happened in these past five years is that I was hit with a spell that changed my appearance a great deal. Asmir may indeed find me frightening. My hair is still the same, though. 

Zel

 

****

 

He pulled in on a day of low clouds and fine, misting rain. Grey Harbor had grown in the last ten years, the port expanded with new jetties out past the sides of the bay. _Lookfar II_ tacked neatly into a small berth on one of the new marinas, and the harbormaster goggled only a little when Zel paid his fee. Port cities were good places to be odd-looking, on the whole. And with his mask up and his hood pulled down over his forehead, most of his peripheral vision was blocked anyway, so he couldn't see the stares. Not much he could do about keen hearing, though. The idle commentary of the harbormaster and his agent followed him down the street.

“That's _Lookfar?_ Surely if he were big news in Seyruun he'd a been on something fancier- that's barely more than a skiff!”

“Another phony then, you reckon? Thought we'd seen the last of 'em ages ago.”

“Well... he's Greywords-get, sure enough. Hair's a dead giveaway.”

“Doesn't exactly narrow it down, much, though, does it?”

Zelgadis was surprised to find that he still knew the way to Pikestaff House. It had been nearly a decade, all told, and it wasn't as if he'd been there for long before that. Two years, was it? But then, for all he'd spent most of his childhood at Greywords Manse, he'd been too young then to wander off the grounds, and with Pikestaff House he'd rarely done anything else. He knew the streets well, if not most of the buildings. The grimy and dangerous docks district had swallowed several of the fine mansions that used to line the harbor; here and there a familiar carved cornice or a stained glass window emerged from the mist, sticking out incongruously from the middle of a warehouse that had been constructed around the bones of an older building. _The people look prosperous, though._ He plodded along on shining bricks, slick with rain and whatever had spilled from the ships' loads – or from the sailors themselves after they came out of one of the taverns. Here were the Red Steps up the hill from the seawall, into the cleaner, wider streets where the shops displayed their wares on shelves, not in bales and bundles, and the muck in the gutters smelled only of horses, not people, pigs, or chickens. _And here's the Temple Square, and here's Gignac Street._

The house itself looked bigger than he remembered. Moving there from the Manse, twelve or so rooms for a family of three... and then four... five, and three or four servants, had seemed far too small. There had been no place to get away from whatever threats this strange, new place might offer. Xander hadn't ever visited them, but by the time Zel had stopped being afraid he would, the schoolroom doubled as a nursery, full of babies, and the parlor was full of Mother and her women friends, and the library could be invaded at any time by...

“Zel! Oy, Zel! Get your nose out of that book for once – whaddaya say we go see a play together.... the archery tournament... the _Dragon Queen_ coming into harbor... Just you and me, eh? Get to know each other a bit?” Sir Pikestaff had probably meant well. It had been clear enough that he and Mother loved each other. But at night, when Zel was supposed to be in bed and was actually hiding behind the sofa... “I don't know, Yvonne... you know I want to do my best for both of you, and it has to have been hard on the poor kid, losing his dad that way, but... he just gives me the creeps. Never wants to do anything, and always... _watching_...”

“Just give him time, Darius, he'll settle in...” 

The first few times, he'd fled in something like panic. Later on, it became a game, testing his wits against a household that, in retrospect, hadn't been trying that hard to stop him.

“Master Zelgadis! Where have you been? Your tutor has been looking for you since three!”

“Really? I left at one. What was Mr. Anglespout doing between times?”

Now, though, it was just a house. Bigger than a ship. Smaller than a castle. Cleaner than an inn. _Much_ cleaner than a bandit camp, and dryer. Potted saplings on either side of the front door, quite a few windows. Zel looked at it blankly for a few minutes, then sighed, pulled his hood back and his mask down, and walked up to the door and knocked. Now for the hard part.

The door was thick enough that the sound of footsteps, first approaching and then retreating, was slightly muffled. A voice called from inside, “Ravi! You'd best linger a bit. I don't like the looks of this one.” And then the same voice, loud enough for an ordinary human to hear it through the door, “Just a moment, sir!” 

It was a long enough moment for Zel to pull out his mother's most recent letter, the one that began, “Of course you must come visit,” and to arrange his posture to be as unthreatening as possible. _The harbormaster's agent was saying something about fakes...why would anyone want to pretend to be me?_

The door opened at last, revealing a rawboned, slightly pop-eyed housekeeper who was hiding her nervousness quite well, Zelgadis thought. 

“Theodosia?” He didn't realize he remembered her until he found himself saying the name. “It is Theodosia, isn't it? You used to be the tweeny. I suppose it would be Mrs. Something, now, wouldn't it.”

“Brasswright,” she agreed, still staring. “Your pardon sir... it's- is that really you, Master Zelgadis?” One of her hands reached out, stopping just short of touching his face. Or maybe she was actually touching him lightly and just had cold hands, it was hard to tell.

“Yes, ma'am.”

She stared a moment longer before pulling herself together. “Well! None of the pretenders who came sniffing around after Sairaag fell knew me at first sight. And your voice hasn't changed that much since that last time you visited... but that must have been some spell you ran into – you look like a statue of yourself!”

Zel allowed himself a brief, incredulous goggle. “Pretenders? Really?”

“Oh, yes, sir. Plus a few more poor souls who were sure _they_ were really Rezo's heir and it was Baron Xavier who was the pretender. Some of them manage to track Lady Yvonne down after Xander and Zeb run them off from the Manse. We had a few bad months of it, right at first, but it's mostly over now. And when Madam got your letter, she knew the handwriting straight off. So you don't need to worry yourself. This way, sir,” and she finally stepped away from the door and led him up the stairs, toward the breakfast room. “Just give your pack to Ravi there.”

Ravi clomped up beside him, clearly a bit ill-at-ease in the role of footman, and possibly, from the cast of his expression, a bit slow mentally as well. Donkey- men often were. “What happened to Valden?” Zel asked as he followed Theo- Mrs. Brasswright- up the stairs. The last man-of-all-work had been human, and Zel hadn't really expected to see him. Menservants tended not to stay as long unless they were married to one of the maids; there were too many other kinds of work to be had. But remembering Valden would be another proof that he was who he said he was.

“Went and put in for Mender on a ship bound to the Outlands,” Theodosia said, without turning around. “Lots of two-copper mages are doing that nowadays, heading Out to work for them foreigners. Good riddance, I say. Harder to find a Smallworker when you need one, now, but the one you find's a lot likelier to know his trade properly.” She knocked briskly on the breakfast-room door, and opened it. “He's arrived, madam.”

Lady Yvonne was there so suddenly it took a moment for her face to come into focus in front of him. She gripped his forearms so tightly Zelgadis could feel the pressure of her hands, as well as the warmth, as she looked into his eyes. Looked _up_ into his eyes: the change of angle was more startling than the lines in her forehead or the strand or two of gray that showed in the few wisps of periwinkle hair that had, inevitably, escaped from her wimple.

Theodosia chattered behind him, but he didn't think his mother heard a word of it. “Knew me right off, ma'am, and he inquired after Valden who left when the Barrier went down. I think he might be real.” Lady Yvonne, clearly, did not require further proof. She swallowed a sob and pulled Zel in for an embrace, which he returned awkwardly. He hadn't been much of a one for hugs even before his transformation, and his odd sense of touch, picking up warmth so quickly and distinctly, had the effect of making every contact seem more intimate than it actually was. 

Theodosia subsided reluctantly. “I'll fetch tea,” she announced, and clattered away back down the stairs. Zel sat where his mother indicated, in a chair next to the sofa where she had clearly established herself for the afternoon. The end table was more than half-covered with books, a sewing-box, and a bowl of rice crackers. In the interval before either of them spoke again, he could hear her heartbeat settle down, and a piping voice on the other side of the wall behind them, saying, “Oh, no! Now the snow has covered them up!” An older woman's voice, amused, echoed, “Oh, no!” 

Lady Yvonne began, tentatively. “Darius will be fetching the boys back within the half-hour. They do their sitting-down studies in the morning, and then they share riding and sword-work tutors with Xander's two in the afternoon.”

“Oh, yes. I remember you wrote when Xander married.” Rezo's people had been clear over in Elemekia at the time, and Zel had not been sorry not to have been invited, for all his curiosity about what kind of woman would be willing to marry Xander. 

There was another silence. “Suppose we start by catching me up on your news a little,” Zelgadis said, finally. “And save my stories until the others are here, so I don't have to repeat myself. Is Sir Pikestaff joining the rush to send ships to the Outlands?”

She chatted comfortably for a while, and Zel let the words wash by him, half attending. Pikestaff was not sending ships out himself, but was doing very well with the purchase of a rope-works, selling cables and lines to the more adventurous merchants. Relations with the older Greywords sons had been easing steadily since it had become clear that Baron Xavier's widowed second wife and her children were not going to be a burden on the resources of the Manse, and indeed, Zebulon Greywords and Sir Darius Pikestaff had become friends. Yes, that was little Gulbadan in the next room, was her voice so very loud, then?

“No, not at all. But you'll notice my ears have grown.”

“Oh. Yes.”

The silence stretched a moment or two longer, as the two of them looked at each other. _We're strangers now, however much we look like each other- or, we would if Rezo hadn't- _he didn't know what he was doing here, or why he had written that first letter. Certainly if it had ever occurred to Amelia or her father that he still had family somewhere, they would have insisted he do something like this, but even so...__

____

A carriage pulled up outside, and Zel heard voices coming nearer. “I think the others are arriving,” he said.

____

Lady Yvonne huffed a relieved breath. “Yes, they are,” she agreed, “Perhaps we should meet them downstairs in the greatroom; we'd be a bit of a crowd in here and the boys are... lively.”

____

“Well enough.”

____

In point of fact, both boys were inclined to pull back when they first came into the room, but Sir Pikestaff boomed cheerfully at him. “Ah! You're here! Mrs. Brasswright says she thinks you're the real thing, eh?”

____

“Yes, sir.”

____

“What the hell happened to you? Sorry, Yvonne. Language. Don't talk like I do, boys. But say hello to your half-brother.”

____

Asmir and Dmitri stepped forward and bowed slightly, never leaving off staring for a moment. The taller one – Asmir? brushed his hair- dark green, rather than Greywords blue or purple- out of his eyes, and arranged his face into one of pre-adolescent, would-be toughness. “Huh. I thought you said he was scary. He looks just like Uncle Zeb, only blue, and with those rock-things stuck on instead of the caterpillar eyebrows.”

____

Zel snorted, amused and sneakily gratified. “Thank you, sir.”

____

The boy preened. His smaller, brown-haired brother whispered, “Those pointy teeth are a _little_ scary...”

____

“Shh.”

____

Zel consciously did not clench his hands or crack his knuckles. “Do you two know what a chimera is?”

____

“Yes, sir. It's a... a construct, sir, made with magic out of different real creatures. And-not–to–be–confused–with– beastmen–or–other–self–perpetuating– hybrids,” Asmir finished his recitation in a rush.

____

“Exactly. That is what happened to me. A mad sorcerer combined my body with those of a Golem and a Brau demon.”

____

“Why? That's awful!” It was the younger Dmitri who spoke, this time, and Zel was still trying to work out how, or whether, to answer him, when the boys' father burst out again, in sympathetic indignation. 

____

“That is awful. I still don't know if you're really Zelgadis or not, sir, but if you'll pardon me saying so, if that sorcerer was here now, I'd kill him where he stands.” Zelgadis looked up, startled. It was as though his stepfather had touched him physically. The man had been losing his hair even ten years ago and now was completely bald, and his features were small and vague-looking. Rezo would have eaten him for breakfast. _Jilas_ could have eaten him for breakfast. But the emotion was sincere, and oddly moving.

____

“Thank you, sir. The man's dead now, two or three times over, but... thank you.” Sir Pikestaff nodded briskly and they all settled themselves in the greatroom. The boys had a corner where their games and a few toys were set up, and the adults took chairs nearby.

____

“But I don't understand,” Dmitri announced, “If the bad sorcerer is dead, shouldn't the curse be broken?”

____

“It's not a curse, Stupidhead, it's a transformation. Don't you know _anything?_ ” Their mother intervened with a look and Asmir subsided.

____

“Can't he get better? Can't he go to the Well of the Water Dragon King, like in the story?” Dmitri persisted.

____

“It seems not,” Zel told them all. “I've been looking for a cure since it happened, and I've tried everything short of human sacrifice or bargaining with mazoku, both of which options would compromise my humanity even more than my current form. The most likely source I've found so far said that there _is_ no cure. Unless there's some new kind of magic somewhere in the Outlands we don't know about, and that's looking less and less likely, I'm stuck like this.” He unclenched his hands again, got his breathing back under control. If there was any fault here, it didn't belong to the boys, and even their parents would probably have said they meant well at the time. They just hadn't been paying attention, either of them. _Rezo had them- us- all fooled._

____

Sir Pikestaff clapped him heartily on the shoulder. “Come now, Come n- ow! (ee, that smarts) It's not been all bad, surely. You work at the palace in Seyruun, now, yes? How did that come to pass?”

____

“Roundabout,” Zel acknowledged the change of subject gratefully. “The Princess Amelia and I have a mutual...friend. Mostly a friend. I still don't quite understand how the Family of Seyruun came to have anything to do with Lina Inverse, but I've run across her here and there, when we were both hunting the same artifacts, and well, one thing led to another.”

____

“Lina Inverse!” Asmir's eyes lit. _“The_ Lina Inverse? The One Who Leaves Smoking Craters Wherever She Goes?” Zel nodded. “What's she _like?"_

____

“A shrew.”

____

Asmir, proving his eleven-year-old superiority, smirked. “You mean she has a pink nose and eats a couple times her own weight every day?” He looked around to see if anyone appreciated his joke.

____

“That, too.”

____

There was another pause, and then Dmitri took up the interrogation. “I want to know about Seyruun! What are _they_ like?”

____

“The city, or the family?” _Yes,_ he thought, _please ask me all about Seyruun. I'd rather talk for the next two hours about Seyruun than spend two minutes on Sairaag. Or anything before Sairaag._

____

“Both!”

____

“Well, the city is famous for its temples and libraries. And arguments and rivalries between them. The family are... warm.”

____

“Warm?”

____

“Open-hearted, enthusiastic, high-principled. The most sincere people I have ever seen wielding that much power, and the least self-interested. Prince Phil is a bit like your father, actually, in manner at least.” The two boys stared doubtfully at Sir Pikestaff, who blushed to the top of his shiny forehead. Zelgadis fell silent again, thinking. _They look like strong, lucky, thick-skinned simpletons, the princess and her father both, but I think it's a deliberate choice. I think that when they lost the Queen and the Crown Princess, they trained themselves away from despair the same way I trained myself out of fidgeting when I became strong enough to break things._

____

“But what is it like?” Asmir persisted. Sir Pikestaff added, “What do you do there?”

____

“What I do there is mostly travel elsewhere, actually. I'm passable with a sword and more than passable with combative magic- offense and defense both, plus a few other useful skills. So if the Princess or one of the ambassadors needs to go somewhere risky with a very small party, I'm often part of the entourage. The official title is Ombudsman, which means, 'make yourself useful, Zel,' and I get paid on a piecework basis, but well. No expectation of lands or a title, now or ever, no hard feelings if I go do something else between jobs, so long as I don't sell any state secrets.”

____

“Do you know state secrets?”

____

“Not as such.” _Amelia reads her lost sister's diaries and hides them during the day. The world has nearly ended more often than you'd ever guess, and those are just the times_ I _know about. Prince Phil likes tuba music and worked a brief, incognito stint as a professional wrestler when he was young. There is such a thing as a mazoku bureaucrat, and pray you never meet the bastard._ None of those things were state secrets. Just... not things to publicize.

____

“Where are some places you've been?

____

“Zoana, before it fell. Atlas City. Ruginvald. Taforashia, both before and after they woke up. Some places in the Outlands...” He was not going to mention Femile. Or the Rolly-rolly villages. 

____

There were voices outside the door: little Gulbadan and her nurse, on their way to join the family before supper. The girl scampered into the room, careening against her father, mother, and toward the boys in a series of brief hugs. She skidded to a stop just before crashing into Zel's knees, and looked up at him. “Would you like a hug?” 

____

“er-”

____

She was _fast._ Before Zelgadis could get anything further out, she had slithered up onto his lap and wrapped her arms around his neck, then scrambled down again. “Your hairs are prickly,” she announced.

____

“Gully! Manners!” The nurse was suppressing a smile and the other adults laughing outright. Zel had been braced for the girl to run away crying. It wouldn't have been the first time. Gully's attention had landed on Zel's hands, as he brushed his “prickly” hair out of his face again. 

____

“Are your hands ouchy?” She asked, pointing at the fingerless gloves he wore.

____

“No.”

____

“Why have you got gloves on? Are your hands cold? They're all blue.” 

____

“All of me is all blue, and some people don't like that. So I tend to wear clothes that cover me up. But I wear the gloves because my hands are a little slippery. Like worn-down cobblestones. If I need to wield a sword or haul a jib line or something like that, the gloves help me get a firmer grip.”

____

“Oh.” The girl digested this for a moment, and then announced, “My name is Gulbadan, G-u-l-b-a-d-a-n, but you can call me Gully if you want to.”

____

“My name is Zelgadis.”

____

“Oh.” She looked over at Lady Yvonne. “Another one?”

____

“I think this one is real, sweetheart.”

____

“Are you sure?”

____

“I'm fairly sure. We could still be wrong, but I don't think so.”

____

“Oh.” Gully lost interest and went over to beg a game of “chess” from her full brothers. “You be the king, and I'll be the queen, and this one can be the dog, and this one is the baby...” 

____

Zelgadis turned to his mother. “Have there really been that many people after a third son's share of the declining fortunes of a minor nobleman? Rezo's family wasn't famous for being wealthy.” _I should know, I was the one of the ones who had to steal supplies for him._

____

She smiled, gently. “Only three or four that made it this far, dear. The obvious ones got turned away at the front door.”

____

“I don't think any of the bright ones were really after the Greywords money,” Sir Pikestaff added. “They were casing this house for their gangs, or running some other scam. The one that fooled Zeb – what did the constable call him, Fitz the Face? - pretended to have a sure-fire investment scheme he was letting us in on to make up for his years of neglect.”

____

“And they were all professional charmers,” Lady Yvonne agreed. “None of _them_ would mention Lina Inverse and then only have four words to say about her. So, either you are genuine, or you are a very, very good liar, who has decided on a nonstandard pattern of flinches. You haven't tried to attack, kidnap, or hustle anyone, so if you're shamming you're playing a long game, and the longer it goes on the more you reveal yourself. One way or the other.”

____

“Oh. Yes, that makes more sense.” The implications should be more worrying, he supposed, but... how much was really at stake here? The worst they were likely to do was kick him out, and then he'd just... not come back. It might be better for everyone if he didn't, anyway. _What do I have to offer a nice, normal family besides a few bad memories and some facts they don't want to know about their most famous ancestor?_

____

The children's game erupted suddenly into a wild chase around the greatroom. The boys were shouting: “Is not!” “Is too!” and it looked like Dmitri was the one pursuing Asmir, but it was hard to tell. Little Gulbadan ran too, shouting, “Can't catch me! Guys! Guys! Try and catch me!”

____

They didn't, but Sir Pikestaff obligingly snagged her on an arm and pulled her in to tickle her ribs while she shrieked. Zelgadis thought he was probably the only one in the room who heard Lady Yvonne's murmur of, “now, children,” but the nurse pulled herself out of the background and took charge. “All right, all of you out! Upstairs, now! Time to wash!”

____

Zelgadis sat there, blinking. It had been a long time since he'd had much to do with children. Lina didn't really count.

____

“I should probably wash as well,” he said, finally. “I've been sailing a skiff for the last few days.” _And if Sir Pikestaff suggests that he and I go to a bathhouse together to 'get to know each other better,' I shall perform a Daug Haut and redecorate this nice parlor with a giant rock spar, pinning his guts to the ceiling._

____

“Give the kids some time to finish yelling,” Sir Pikestaff advised. “They eat earlier than we do, anyway. Plenty of time.”

____

“All right, then.”

____

“I did want to ask you, though... do you have any particular time you need to be elsewhere? For whatever Seyruun has you working on right now? Just so we can make our own plans, you understand.”

____

“Well, there are a few things I need to do, but there isn't an actual deadline.” It had been the most nebulous assignment he'd ever received, in fact. Just two lists, both given to him by the Minister of Healthy Paranoia. One of them detailed topics of interest to be alert for when gathering intelligence, and the other was a list of blind drops where any such intelligence could be delivered. The whole thing was so like a paid vacation that Zel half-suspected Prince Phil of actually being aware of his connections in Camezind and giving him a subtle nudge in their direction. “Phil” and “subtle” fit together in a sentence approximately as well as “Lina” and “delicate,” _but I've seen a mazoku lieutenant fight to save the world twice in as many years, so stranger things have happened._ Aloud, he said, “I thought I might stay here a day or three and then see how things stand.”

____

“So little? After so long away?” Lady Yvonne's eyes welled with tears, and she abruptly became “Mother” again in Zel's mind. “Surely you can manage a week or two?”

____

“If you like.”

____

“Splendid!” Sir Pikestaff announced. “We live fairly quietly but we can manage a few entertainments here and there – maybe sail around the bay with the boys one day, or go riding... Most of our friends are just the wrong age for balls...“

____

_Thanks be to the merciful heavens_ , Zel thought.

____

“And of course we'll all dine at the manse for at least one evening.

____

_Of course. Won't that be fun_. “A quiet schedule suits me fine, sir. Suppose we play it by ear?”

____

“As long as you promise to stay at least a fortnight.”

____

“Very well.” Zel nodded to his stepfather, took his mother's hand, briefly, and headed upstairs to the spare rooms to wash, memories of his mother's tears following him.

____


	2. Catching up

_“Poor little innocent.”_ How many times had Zelgadis heard those words? Always about his mother, not him. He got told “Oh, buck up, young sir. Xander didn't mean anything.” Mother, though... if it had to do with Father, or one of Father's projects, her face would light up, or firm into steady, quiet determination. Any other time, her lower lip trembled, her eyes grew moist, she pled, “Oh, nurse, can't you do something?” On a few, rare afternoons when it had been just the two of them, she had been splendid fun, building blanket forts with him, telling stories, spotting birds in the gardens, but her attention had mostly been elsewhere, leaving Zel to the mercies of his older half-brothers. 

And then, one day, a white-faced footman had run into the room, come to attention, and announced, “Milady, Baron Xavier has met with an accident,” and Baron Xavier's second wife had seemed to vanish away inside herself. Her eyes would never focus on anything, even as she held Zel close to her and stroked his hair, even as they both were effectively confined to the north wing of the manse together, out of the sight of Xander, the new, young baron. Until suddenly, her smiles had returned, and the shining eyes, but for Sir Darius Pikestaff, and, soon enough after the funeral to be scandalous, they were both removed to Pikestaff house and Zel was running wild in the streets whenever he could get away. 

Not long after Asmir was born, he had followed a throng of hushed, excited people into the temple of Cephied, to watch the great Red Priest work his miraculous cures. Zel, still small and wiry at ten, had wormed his way to the front, then tried to sneak behind the altar, and been caught. And his grandfather had recognized him. “It's young Zelgadis, isn't it? I've not heard from you since the funeral. Are you all right?” Rezo's blind eyes were closed, not wandering; his attention had all been for Zel. _By the time he came by Pikestaff house the next day and offered to start teaching me magic, it was probably already too late._

The gong rang for supper, and Zel made his way past the nursery (murmurous with sleepy children's whispers; he couldn't make any words out) and down. The table was set for two courses, just enough formality to acknowledge the presence of a guest. Neither Mother nor his stepfather had changed clothing, which was a relief, since Zel hadn't either. Or rather, he had, but the only difference between this suit and the one he'd worn off the _Lookfar II_ was that this one was clean. Sir Pikestaff did most of the talking, mostly about the shipyards and the stories that were coming back from the Outlands. Zel offered a few anecdotes of his own – the one about the time Princess Amelia had been mistaken for an angel went over well. But the meal grew tenser as time went on. The unasked questions seemed to drift like dust motes between them, making a haze in the air. 

His hosts delayed the inevitable a little longer by talking about the children. Both Sir and Lady Pikestaff seemed to be more attentive to his three young half-siblings than Zel would have expected from his own experience, regardless of the Nurse's place in the household. _But then, it's been a while. Surely they could grow wiser, just as I did. I hope I did._ Sir Pikestaff even came close to saying exactly that: “Dmitri's quiet, like you were. He talked a lot more this evening than usual. Smart, though... I wish I'd known what I know now back when Yvonne and I first married, I probably would have done a better job by you.”

It would have been impolite to agree. Mother shook her head, sadly. “We were so young,” she sighed, “so young, and so out of our depth. Thank goodness for Rezo. I don't know what we would have done without his wisdom and kindness... I still remember the first time you'd snuck off to the temple and he brought you home, Zel. You looked so... alive. Excited and happy for the first time in years, since even before Xavier died.”

Zelgadis set his fork down before he did something unfortunate to it, and looked at his plate. “I fell in love with him,” he agreed. “Not in any carnal sense.” _Not then. Not later, either, really. I just... made myself useful._ “But in love, all the same.”

Mother half stood up and leaned across the table to squeeze his shoulder with one hand, then tilted his chin up until he was looking at her again. “Son, what _happened?_ You were transformed, Rezo died at Sairaag – were you there? Or elsewhere looking for a cure? Was the sorcerer who attacked you the same one who killed Rezo?” Her voice was growing tighter and higher-pitched with each question.

Zelgadis took a deep breath. _If they're going to throw me out, it will happen in the next fifteen minutes._ “Talking about that is going to be painful for both- all three- of us. Let's at least go sit in the greatroom, where the chairs are comfortable.” That bought him all of ninety seconds to decide what he was going to say, or rather, how. Once they were each in one of the armchairs by the fire, Lady Yvonne sat straight up and demanded, “Talk, Zel.”

He'd told this story many times over by now- Lina had been one of the first, young Prince Posel, who had in his way been even more badly served by Rezo than himself, was the latest. He thought he had come to some kind of peace with it all by now. All the same, he felt his own heartbeat speed up to match the others in the room as he struggled to keep his voice even. 

“The mad sorcerer who made a chimera of me was Rezo. He did worse than that at Sairaag, calling up a Demon Lord that consumed him and destroyed the city. I was there, yes, fighting alongside the sorceress who did succeed in killing him. I didn't have enough power to kill him myself, and I don't even know how much help I was by that point, but if I could have...”

This last was only partly true. There had been a time later when he could have, and hadn't. But explaining that would mean explaining why Rezo's end had come so long after Rezo's death, and his mother and stepfather were already staring in shock.

Mother whispered, “I don't...”

 _...believe you._ Zelgadis had been braced for exactly that. Rezo was already being treated as a minor god when he'd left home with him all that time ago. And here, in the city of Rezo's birth... He had lost his temper with that little twerp Pokota when Pokota had refused to believe him, not all that long ago. This time, he kept himself in check.

“No question of a mistake, or a shapeshifter,” he told them. “He was right there in front of me, when it happened. Some of the others in the gang were witnesses. At least one of them had helped Rezo with his... preparations. The first time Rezo sent me out on an assignment after that, I made contact with his targets and allied myself with them. And that was that.” He looked down at his hands.

Mother was kneeling in front of him, beside his chair. She put a hand on his back and pulled him down until he was leaning his head on her shoulder. “I don't understand, was what I was going to say,” she said, running her hand over the back of his head, as she'd done when he was small. “I don't understand what made Rezo turn on you like that. I know he was capable of ruthlessness, but you would never have done anything to...” she trailed off again. “I'm so sorry.”

“...not your fault,” Zelgadis mumbled. His mother's compassion left him feeling nearly as adrift as Rezo's betrayal had. He'd not wept since the transformation; he wasn't sure he was physically capable of doing so any more. And he had no rage left. 

Sir Pikestaff harrumphed. “We need booze,” he announced, and strode to the sideboard to pull out three cups and start pouring. Then he strode back, set the drinks on an end table, and pulled Lady Yvonne's chair closer to Zelgadis' so she could sit while still holding his hand.

“All right, then,” he rumbled. “Talk, or don't, young man. But drink up.”

Mother laughed, a little, and took a sizable swig, winking at her husband. Zel suspected an in-joke. He took a more cautious sip for himself. He didn't think losing restraint was going to help him that much. He was already talking more than he had in ages. Neither Lina nor Amelia, bless them, were listeners by nature, and Gourry... well, he wouldn't interrupt, but one might as well talk to a horse. Or a sheepdog. He'd almost started talking about it to Xellos, once – he must have been desperate – and the Mazoku had cut him off on the third word: “Excuse me. Self-pity is not very filling,” and then vanished. _Maybe if Sylphiel and I had worked together more often..._ He looked up at his mother and stepfather and went on.

“Ironically, the most sympathetic explanation I've ever heard for Rezo's actions came from the girl who managed to kill him. You see, the Dark Lord he invoked at Sairaag was sealed within him, behind his blind eyes. We don't think he knew that. So Lina's view is, Rezo was a good man who fought the impulses of his inner demon, far more literally than usual, and finally succumbed.”

“Is that what you think?” 

He sighed. “Depends on the day. Mostly... not. I've gone over all my memories of him, and I can't come up with a single time where he was anything but selfish. Not unkind, mind you, he did like to help people, especially if there were lots of other people around, watching and admiring. But he never chose to do-or not do- something he didn't want to. 

“The only thing – the _only_ thing- he cared about was gaining his sight. He learned magic in the first place tying to heal himself. And then he traveled the world, performing his miracles and being called a great man, and searching for other spells that might let him see. If he needed something he didn't have, well, he was a great man, and if some of his followers needed to go to extreme measures to get his supplies, it was all to the greater good. If some pretty young thing fell in love with the great man, he would bed her,” _no matter which of us she'd come in with_ “and keep her on if she had any other handy skills. And all the time, the magic he studied got deeper, and darker...” 

Sir Pikestaff drained his cup in two gulps and headed back to the sideboard.

“Why he turned on me... he thought it would be useful, I suppose. I am stronger than I was, physically and magically. It made me a better tool. He had some kind of control spell that worked on the Golem piece, though he didn't invoke it often, thank... whatever. He would have been willing to make a chimera of himself, if he thought it would let him see. I was a close relative, maybe I was a test run. Maybe... maybe he even thought he had some kind of consent from me; I'd done enough other things for him by that point.... If he'd said to me, 'Zel, I need your help. This is a very dangerous spell, and it will turn you into a monster and an outcast, but it will teach me things I need to know and you'll be able to serve me better,' if he'd said that... I want to believe I would have said 'no,' but I'm honestly not sure. He didn't ask. And I eventually realized he just didn't care if I was willing or not, and never would see that there was any difference. So I left. A few of the gang went with me; they died at Sairaag.”

Not long after, he and Lina and the others had encountered another former follower of Rezo's, the last, or nearly the last, of the “pretty young things,” still in thrall to him after his death. It had not been pretty.

The lamps in the greatroom were half-emptied of oil, and the fire was a bed of coals. Zelgadis took another sip of his drink and actually tasted it this time. Brandy. He didn't drink often enough to know good from bad, but it was probably decent.

His mother sighed in her turn, and wiped her eyes. “I wish you'd come home then. I know why you didn't... but I wish you had. Facing something like that alone...”

“Oh, I wasn't, though. Zolf and Rodimus stood by me from the first- did you ever meet them? And by the time they died I'd met Lina, and Lina's been a good friend, and so has Gourry, and the Princess Amelia too... there are a few others here and there.”

“You mention Lina often. Are you and she...”

Zel nearly laughed out loud. “No! Oy, what a thought... No. First of all, she really is a shrew. Also as close to being married to her bodyguard as she can be without admitting it, and on top of all that... as I am, I would have to be very lucky not to accidentally kill a human lover, sooner or later. Other options are... neither greatly appealing nor widely available. I find it's better to direct my energies elsewhere. Loyalty, I find, I can manage. Camaraderie. Romance, no.” 

“Aah, yer still young,” Sir Pikestaff opined, brandy-voiced. “'Y'll figger it out sooner'r later. He waved his hand at the stairs. “Time to retire? I've sure had enough.”

Lady Yvonne was still crying, but she nodded. “We all need... time, I think. Zel, I'm so glad you're back. I hope... well. Sleep well tonight, anyway. If you need anything...” she trailed off.

Impulsively, Zelgadis leaned over and kissed her cheek before heading upstairs. “Goodnight, mother. I'm sorry for... but thank you for hearing me out.”

“Of course.”

Back in the spare room, hanging his clothes in the wardrobe, Zel could hear the last sounds of the house settling down. Mother was still crying, and he thought Sir Pikestaff was comforting her, but they were two rooms away and the sounds were faint. The house had mice, but not too many of them. Stealthy footsteps sounded from the nursery, bringing him alert, and when he leaned into the door he could pick up the whispers outside, and a scraping noise. “...so if he's really a thief and he tries to go sneaking around, when the door opens, the chair will fall over, and then...” Zel smiled. It sounded like he didn't need to worry about setting up some kind of trap on this side of the door then, and then waking up in time to dismantle it before the tweeny came in to see to the fire. All the better. He felt emptied out, purged of some psychic poison, and so tired... _It's been a long, long day._ Whether as a guest of this house, or family, he felt safe. He could sleep.


	3. Combat Elocution

Next morning, the rainclouds had turned high and pale, likely to burn or blow away by suppertime. The voices in the nursery, two doors away, weren't unlike the birdsong that would have wakened him had he slept outdoors again; chirps and caws, the occasional thump from the lower level of the house as Ravi carried loads of wood to where they needed to go. Zelgadis dressed, splashed water on his face, and made his way to the breakfast-room, in search of something to soak up the last of that unfamiliar brandy. He didn't have anything as definite as a headache, or an upset stomach, but neither did he feel entirely himself. There was no sign of the chair the boys had leaned against his door last night; the staff must have done something about it. Nor was anyone else in the breakfast-room. Zel helped himself to a steamed bun and eggs and tea, and saw a note with his name on it, folded on the little table by the sofa:

_Zel, Darius and I generally keep to our rooms first thing in the morning. I will be going into town around ten, if you'd like to ride with me, and we can make the rest of our plans after luncheon. Please do ring if you need anything. Mother._

Well enough. He pulled the bell rope, bemused. Mrs. Brasswright stepped in a minute or two later. “If – or when- she's awake, please give Mother my compliments and let her know I will ride with her into town. I have an errand or two of my own there.” Might as well earn his keep and see what he could winkle out about the Outlands for Prince Phil.

“Very good, sir.” 

Zel was still lingering over his breakfast when the boys swarmed in, Nurse and Gully in their wake. The two of them reached for plates, started to fill them, were admonished into taking only one spoonful of jam apiece for their rice pudding, and settled down to eat, silent, but vibrating, taking it in turn to steal glances at their half-brother. Zel laid a bet with himself about how long it would be before one of them tried to find out if their booby trap had worked. Gully had a high stool to bring her up to the level of the breakfast table; she gave Zel's knees another hug as she went to it and scrambled up.

“Did you have good dreams?” Gully asked. The boys both looked slightly disgusted. Zel smiled again. Where had the children like this been, when all the ones he met ran away crying? _Maybe the difference is that they're safe at home, with their parents here._ He doubted they could tell him if he asked.

“I don't remember dreaming at all last night, thank you, Gulbadan,” he said aloud. “Did you have good dreams?”

“Yes. I went up the stairs, and the cat's tail got tooken away, and there was pie. And then I woke up,” she concluded.

“Ah. And what will you do today?”

“Oh, the usual.” She grinned at him, proud of using such a grown-up phrase, perhaps, and then went back to eating. 

The boys took it upon themselves to invent dreams they had had to tell him about, and try to outdo each other. Dmitri, Zel noticed, seemed to have the more interesting ideas, Asmir the greater determination to come out of the victor of the contest. “And then _I_ flew a _thousand_ feet up and threw a fireball at the Monster, and- and..” They simmered down eventually and went back to peppering Zel with questions. They wanted to know what he was going to do today and were disappointed to learn it was nothing that would gain them a holiday. They wanted to know about the ship he'd come in on and were disappointed to learn that he had a little, clinker-built coast hopper; though they were briefly intrigued by her name.

“Where's _Lookfar I?_ ” 

“In a book; _Deeds of the Archmages._ Your father might have a copy; I know there's one at the manse because I read it, over and over, when I was Dmitri's age.”

“Huh.” 

_Fitz the Face obviously set a high standard for what a long-lost half-brother is supposed to have on offer. Not schoolwork, it appears._ Not long after that, Nurse chivvied the children out again, and Zel retreated with some relief to the library, to await his ten o'clock ride to town.

The morning's errands went well. By the time he and Mother met up again, Zel had purchased a very interesting little music box that had been imported from the Outlands and placed a page and a half of notes in the Temple library's copy of _The Snodgrass Anthology of Zoanian Literature_ , to be collected by his blind drop. He wondered, as he always did, how much of this flummery was actually necessary to thwart rival spies and how much was just there to keep the allied spies busy and out of mischief. He and Mother had a peaceable ride back to Pikestaff House, making desultory conversation about the customs of Seyruun. Zel kept his mask and hood up until they walked in the front door.

Lady Yvonne sifted through the pile of letters that waited for her in the greatroom and picked one to open. Her face twisted a little. “That was fast. The harbormaster must have contacted Zebulon.”

“What was fast?”

“Word of your arrival has reached the manse. We are invited- summoned, more like- to put in an appearance the day after tomorrow, accompanying the boys to their lessons and then staying to dinner. Your Greywords brothers want to look you over.”

 _Bleah._ “All right, I can brace myself.” 

“Thank you, dear. I'll plan something fun for the day after that; maybe we'll pack a few lunches and go sailing.”

 _“Lookfar_ isn't that big...”

“That's no matter, I was thinking we'd take the _Flying Leap_ and let Darius show off a bit.”

“Sounds good.”

The next day and a half passed quickly. When the time came, Zelgadis volunteered to walk to the manse, rather than riding in the coach, which wasn't really big enough for six even if Gulbadan sat in someone's lap. This had the twin advantages of getting him away from the children and out of the house early, which by that time he wanted badly. Not that his younger half-siblings were badly behaved, but they were... intense. All three seemed locked in a competition to see who could occupy the largest share of the attention of any adult in the room, and Zel's in particular. 

Furthermore, in a moment of stark insanity, Zelgadis had acquiesced to a plea from the boys' tutor to spend that morning in the schoolroom, in hopes that having Zel be part of the geography lesson would make the boys attend better. The idea was that the tutor would provide statistics and Zel would provide color. Only, he wasn't a storyteller by nature, and his efforts were not helped by sundry interruptions of “Zel! Zel! Look! Listen! He pinched me! I did not! Zel!” Amelia would have had a ball. Amelia would have also had a much easier time bringing to mind anecdotes that were not inappropriate for young children. Even the belated realization that his younger half-brothers thought he was unspeakably cool (that was a good thing, right? He'd always believed so before) was not enough to make up for being rattled and overstimulated.

So Zelgadis felt the need of solitude, exercise, and a little time for reflection. Especially before facing his _older_ half-brothers. _Which will it be, I wonder: Will they assume I'm another imposter, or will I be the genuine, despised son of their never-quite-accepted stepmother, inconveniently returned from the dead and doubtless up to something?_ Since it seemed Zeb – _Admiral_ Zeb now, what a thought – was back in town and staying at the family seat, he supposed it could be one of each. _Oh, joy._

The walk, down one hill and up another one, wasn't bad. The road had dried out enough to be neither muddy nor dusty, and the way was dotted with trees; silkblossoms mostly, with, now and then, a high parasol of camphor perfuming the air around it. The traffic consisted of the occasional farmer or herdsman, and none of them paid much attention to Zel. The trees grew denser as he approached the manse, a thicket of cyprus making a band of coolness in the warm day, then disappeared altogether for the last hundred ells to the wall. _They used to grow up a lot closer in. Were they harvested for timber? And it looks like someone's trimmed the ivy back, too._ The result for the manse property was to bring out the lines of the keep that it had been five hundred years ago. The stones frowned down unsoftened by greenery, and the windows that marked the Porter's lodge, next to the gate, had bars on them. The gate itself was closed, another change from when Zel had lived here. _This has to be Xander's doing. Why would he bother?_

There was no sign of the Pikestaffs' coach, leaving Zel with a dilemma. They had planned on meeting up here and heading inside together. _Am I early, or late? And do I leave my mask up or take it down before I ask the porter about it?_ He was still mulling his options when a window in the gatehouse swung open and the porter leaned out, hands clearly visible and ready to throw a fireball if called upon. 

“Oy! You there! Who are you and why are you loitering?”

The man was surprisingly hale and healthy looking for a gatekeeper; clearly not a pensioner, almost a real guardsman. 

Zel kept his own hands relaxed. No need to upset the man further by threats. “I'm Zelgadis, and I'm-”

The porter groaned. _“Another_ one?”

“- supposed to meet the carriage from Pikestaff House-”

“Oh, that one. Sorry, sir, I'll be down in a minute.”

A few bangs and thumps later, and the man emerged from the door of the gatehouse and met Zel on the path. “No offense meant, sir; we have to be careful here.”

“So I see.”

The porter relaxed a trifle. “It's not just fake heirs, either. We get pilgrims something awful; they'd pluck every leaf in the orchard if we let them, take the wall away stone by stone... why they think there's something so special about the Manse when Rezo himself got away from it as quickly and as often as he could, I don't know.” This, Zelgadis realized, might explain the new security measures, and why the porter wasn't a doddering pensioner. Baron Xanderbald was trying to discourage unwanted visitors without spending too much money or offending the neighbors too much. Zel was about to reply to the man when the sound of carriage wheels interrupted them. The Pikestaffs had arrived.

****

Baron and Lady Greywords met them all in the front room, neither of them looking very happy about it. Zel's eldest half-brother's hair had darkened with age, from sapphire to indigo, and its familial tendency to grow out in two nearly horizontal wings from his forehead had been somewhat tamed by a decade or so of wearing the Barons' turban. Zelgadis remembered him as impossibly tall, but he was probably a little shorter than Gourry, actually, and of a spare, lean build. He'd cultivated a thin mustache, too. Xanderbald nodded coldly to the Pikestaffs and looked at Zel as if he'd found him on the bottom of his shoe. His lady, blowsy, with a round chin, treated everyone with gingerly politeness and barely spoke. “I understand you claim to be my long-lost half-brother,” Xander said. “Have you any proof?”

Zelgadis pulled his mask down and took a deep breath. “Well, I'm not sure what kind of proof you're looking for. I can probably prove that I knew Rezo, which would narrow it down some. I could give you details about living in the manse when we were younger, but it isn't as if you and I shared very many secrets. And even if I were to mention, say, the copy of _Mazeppa in the Seraglio_ that you used to keep hidden in the bottom drawer of the china cupboard in the Green Room, you could argue that I simply met the real Zelgadis somewhere and got it from him.” He went on, over Sir Pikestaff's smothered chortle and Xander's beginning sputter, “I'm also not entirely sure it matters, from your point of view. Either I'm genuine and willing to relinquish whatever's left of my inheritance, or I'm a sham with no right to it in the first place, and in either case I'll be back in Seyruun in three weeks' time, if not sooner, with no effort on your part. Any contact I maintain with the Pikestaff family afterward can be continued without involving the manse in any way at all.”

“Hmph.”

Lady Greywords suggested, tentatively, “perhaps the children should go to their lessons.” 

Asmir, who had been silent and stiff beside Sir Pikestaff under Baron Greywords' disapproving eye, relaxed suddenly and turned to Zel. “Will you come with us and see our drills? Please? And maybe spar? And teach us some new moves?” 

Asmir was exhausting, but the other choice was Xander. “I will come with you, if our host allows it,” Zel told them. Over Asmir's cheer, he added, “I will not teach you my bad habits with a sword; you don't have a body that chips metal and they wouldn't do you any good.”

“I'll come watch too,” Sir Pikestaff volunteered.

“Oh, boy! Wait'll I tell Zeke!”

“Very well,” Xander growled. “I will see you all again before supper.” He spun around and barked, “Where are the children?” 

Gully, clinging to her mother's hand, whispered, “here,” but Zel could pick up the sound of running feet from somewhere inside the Manse, and a moment later, two children scooted into the room: A boy and a girl, both smaller than Dmitri but older than Gully. They skidded to a halt, bowed to their parents, then turned to bow to their guests, and caught their first good look at Zelgadis. They both turned white, stood rigid and staring for a moment, and, with one voice, shrieked, “The Ghost!” and turned to run out the door again.

Asmir pelted after them, shouting. “You dummies, it's not the Ghost, it's Zelgadis! I _told_ you yesterday the new one looked weird...” Gully laughed, a cautious little warble, and Dmitri looked up at Zelgadis uncertainly, his face a bit red. Sir Pikestaff and Baron Greywords both looked angry; their wives looked embarrassed. 

Zel rubbed a hand over his face. “I'm very sorry,” he said.

“No,” said Lady Greywords, “I am. Ezekiel! Zenobia! Come back this instant and apologize to our guest."

The two children edged back in. Asmir stood between them, holding their hands and looking disgusted. Zel bowed to the three of them. “I'm sorry to have frightened you,” he told them. “I have no intention of harming you or any of your household.” The children's answering murmurs were unintelligible even to Zel's ears, but that was all right.

“What's this about a ghost?” Lady Yvonne sounded amused.

“We don't know,” Lady Greywords answered, “Only that the children are persuaded that there is one. No manifestations, no mysteriously rearranged furniture, no sudden cold spots not directly in the path of a drafty window... I think it's one of their games.”

“Lot of nonsense,” the Baron muttered. “Ghosts! In the Red Priest's home seat! As well look for bugs in a bat colony!”

Lady Greywords patted his arm. “I'm sure you're right, dear. Suppose we let you go back to work and the rest of us will head out to the gardens and the drill field?”

****

Armsmaster Groan's work with the children proved to be be worth watching. He held them to strict, but not impossible, standards as they all, down to Gully, went through their opening forms. As they moved into individual practice, Zel noted with approval that they weren't confined to katas but were also practicing less formal, but equally time-honored, survival tactics, such as screaming bloody murder, jamming little fingers into ribs or up noses, and wriggling away and skedaddling. _It looks like Xander's trying to kidnap-proof them. I guess his talent for making enemies is not diminished._ Either that, or some of that plague of pilgrims the porter had mentioned had been people with reasons to remember Rezo less than fondly. Or both. 

Gully and Zenobia stopped after the first hour and wandered back to play near their mothers. The boys kept going, and Zelgadis decided he ought to get some practice in, too. He drifted away from the lawn and toward the neglected rock garden, where he had some varied terrain to work with and there was no danger that a misplaced Fireball would damage anything. Given the Baron's paranoia, he'd better avoid anything much fancier in the magical line, and besides, his more specialized spells worked much better on creatures with souls than on inanimate objects. With rare exceptions, rocks did not have a strong presence in the Astral plane. So, no big shaman's moves today. 

Instead, Zel focused on sword-work and minor spells, finishing up after a pleasant hour with an escape, rather than an attack combination: Tumbling dive, spin and send off a Fireball behind, work a combination of Ray Wing and Windy Shield and hold it for a trip around the perimeter of the rock garden, and then back down. Asmir was near the landing spot, staring worshipfully, and Zel spotted the rest of the group, also settled in to watch, a more prudent distance away from any fireballs. When Zel sheathed his sword, Armsmaster Groan walked up, nodding judiciously.

“Interesting. Where'd you learn the Reverse Popinjay/Overhand Slash combination?”

“Man by the name of Gabriev.”

“Too flashy. It takes some skill, right enough, but unless your opponent is at least a head shorter than you a straight lunge will do you better than the overhand.”

“I'll keep that in mind.” The two of them and Asmir started back toward the larger group.

Asmir bounced. “That was so cool! I can't wait until I get to do sword-and-sorcery drills!”

“Are you even doing magic yet?”

“Yeah, look! LIGHTNING!” Asmir's short-lived glow-ball looked less than impressive in the bright sunshine, but it was well-shaped, for a beginner spell.

“And when I can hold it steady for ten minutes, I get to start on Diem Wing!” Asmir went on, excitedly. “I'm getting better and better at it, aren't I, mama? Dumb-itri's still stuck doing tongue twisters.” Asmir stuck his own tongue out at his brother, who hunched in on himself.

Zelgadis had learned over the years that suddenly emitting an aura of menace was, in fact, a teachable skill. Keep your chin tucked down, look at your target from under your eyebrows, don't blink, keep your voice mild and even. _And above all else, do not, under any circumstances, allow yourself to imagine what Xellos would do if he saw you cribbing his moves._

He turned quickly enough to make his cloak billow a little behind him and jerked Asmir up by his collar. He watched the squirming boy from beneath level brows. “Asmir,” he said, quietly and evenly, “In the eight or so hours I have spent in your company, I have witnessed at least twenty-four occasions on which you decided to belittle or humiliate your brother, and another four or five occasions on which you decided to threaten him with outright violence. I recommend that you stop that. Immediately.”

Since it would wreck the mood to turn his eyes aside, Zel wasn't able to see how their audience was taking this, but he could hear the gasps, and a dismayed squeak from Lady Greywords. Sir Pikestaff began to clear his throat and was interrupted by a hiss from his wife. “Sh. Maybe he's actually _listen_ to Zel.”

Asmir, still dangling, pried ineffectually at Zel's wrists and tried his tough-kid face again. “Aww, lemme go. It doesn't _mean_ anything!”

“Yes. It. Does. Stop.” Zelgadis let go; Asmir landed, not too clumsily, and slunk back next to his parents. All five children looked scared, and Gully was actually starting to cry. Belatedly, Zel wondered if the lawn of the manse, in front of the offspring of a notoriously twitchy Baron who already disliked him, was the best choice of ground for this particular move. He sighed and let his shoulders droop. Too late now. No way out but through.

He knelt near Dmitri, turning his back slightly on the disgraced Asmir. “So, tongue-twisters?” 

The younger boy nodded, miserably. “They keep giving me more and more of them,” he muttered. “Asmir got to start real Orisons after he got through Betty Botter and One Black Beetle, but not me...”

 _Thought so._ “Did you ask why?”

Dmitri looked at him as if he'd just grown a pair of tusks. “It's 'cause I _suck_ at them, isn't it obvious?”

“Actually, no.” Zel smiled a little. “You know why you do tongue-twisters first, right?”

“So I don't mess up when I'm saying real Words of Power.”

“Exactly. The more power you use, the more important it is to get those words exactly right, and the more likely it is that you're going to have to do it while the world is going crazy around you. Now here's another piece of the puzzle for you. You practice sword work an hour and a half a day, three days a week. Professional soldiers do three times that, minimum. It's not because they're less skilled than you are, is it?”

Dmitri wrinkled his forehead in thought, but Zenobia made the connection immediately. “It's 'cause they have to be really, really sure, right?”

“That's right, Zenobia. Soldiers' lives are much more likely to depend on their weapons skills than yours or Asmir's. And by the same token, someone who has or will have enough power to work dangerous spells needs to be really, really sure he'll be in control of his mouth when the time comes.”

Dmitri unfolded slowly, and the others edged closer. “Do you mean... I'll be a better mage than Asmir?”

“Maybe.”

“Wow!” Dmitri's face lit for an instant, then he sighed. “It gets boring, though.”

“It does,” Zel agreed. “So do Orisons and Elementary Chants, and even the kind of thing I do. If you want to make things more challenging for yourself, you could try reciting during sword practice, or every time you hear a carriage go by Pikestaff House in the course of the day.” 

Armsmaster Groan nodded, approvingly, and put in, “that will help you train your awareness and strengthen your concentration.”

Asmir bounced up from his huddle at Mother's side: “Let's try right now!”

Decades later, Combat Elocution would become an organized sport with regulation beanbags, youth leagues and university scholarships attached. Armsmaster Groan generally got credit for formulating the basic rules of the game. However, this first time, on the lawns of Greywords Manse, was an out-and-out melee. Green plums from the orchard and dead blossoms from the dahlias bordering the walk were the weapons of choice for the combatants, and there was no ritual of choosing Go stones to decide the teams. There were no teams at all, in fact, only temporary and shifting alliances between the five children and Zel. 

Lady Yvonne, Lady Greywords, and Sir Pikestaff acted as referees, calling fouls whenever anyone got their syllables mixed up, although often as not the one making the mistake solved the problem by dissolving into laughter. Armsmaster Groan upped the difficulty by shouting orders at random: “Zeke! Outside legsweep! Gully! Knife-hand strike left! No! Left!” He had to be obeyed without losing track of the tongue-twisters. Gully marched or skipped around, roaring, “Toooy BOAT! Toooy BOAT!” and trying to tickle people, since her throwing range was miniscule. Asmir aimed a running tackle at Zel: “-buggy bumpers! Rugger bubber – grrra!” Dmitri tripped him.

Zel threw plums with pinpoint accuracy, timing their release to coincide with the end of each phrase: “The other black beetle bled BLUUUUE!” He ran a twisting, looping route around Xander's two kids, who were standing back to back and selling seashells by the seashore in tandem. He was concentrating so hard on his timing that he failed to tuck his shoulder for a roll when his boot slipped on a squashed flower, and landed flat on his face instead. 

Instantly, Zenobia dashed to his side and planted a foot on the back of his neck. “Justice has prevailed,” she crowed. Zel felt the spasm of homesickness move through him like a Digger Volt, engaging every muscle and cell with sudden completeness, and passing off in the next instant, leaving him aching. 

The game broke up not long after that. Lady Greywords kindly performed the Tide Sweep spell to remove Zenobia's footprint from the back of Zel's cloak, while he did the same with the more serious grass stains he'd picked up in that last fall. The routine task was soothing, and Zel went on to help the ladies with getting the children cleaned up as well, rather to their bemusement. “Hey,” he said, “I've spent nearly ten years wearing cream-colored clothes while I follow mad sorcerers around. You think I can't manage laundry?”


	4. Death of a Spoon

Zel's sanguine mood had chilled again by the time Armsmaster Groan bowed himself away and the family party made it to the door of the Manse again. The children galloped up the stairs in a body, still giggling. With their departure Lady Greywords seemed to suddenly recall that, however entertaining or good with stains her guest was, he was not without his problematic aspects. She chewed her lip, suddenly looking younger than the thirty or so years Zel had guessed at first meeting her. When a footman stepped up to her to tell her that Admiral Greywords had arrived and was waiting in the parlor with the Baron, she swallowed hard enough for Zel to hear her before leading them all in.

Zebulon was already spending most of his time away at sea when Zel was growing up at the manse, so facing him again was a little easier than facing Xander. Particularly since Zeb started out by ignoring him in favor of bowing the ladies to their seats and making a loud, hearty greeting to Sir Pikestaff. While the lean build and wings of blue-purple hair marked Zeb as a Greywords, had he passed him in the street Zelgadis would probably have just thought, “sailor.” His second half-brother's face was tanned red-brown, and his hair and eyebrows (bushy, just as Asmir had said) were bleached nearly lavender. His posture was spread-legged and loose-kneed, ready to adapt should the floor begin to move, and his hands gripped invisible ropes.

There was also the question of his manners. Zeb looked Zelgadis over as openly as if he were assessing the haul from a press-gang, and then turned to Sir Pikestaff. “Frankly, Darius,” he announced, “Your lady wife astounds me. Given the rapscallions that plagued you all after Sairaag fell, I could understand how, when poor Runt finally showed up last year, you might fail to recognize him, though his sincere entreatings would make a stone weep. But having done so, how could she possibly allow herself to be duped by this- this circus freak?” Zeb's eyebrows vibrated indignantly. 

Zel gritted his teeth and leaned over toward his mother. “I take it he's talking about that Fitz the Face guy?” he whispered.

She nodded slightly, murmuring in turn, “he did have quite a line in sincere entreatings.”

Zeb loomed up at him, glaring. “Well, sir? What's your game? How did you fool my poor stepmother? What do you think you're getting out of it?”

Zel answered quietly, “I'm in town on an errand from my employer, Prince Philionel of Seyruun, and intend to stay at Pikestaff House for about a fortnight before I continue on to Snaff, after which I will head back home to Seyruun again. With regards to Mother, I'm told she recognized my handwriting.”

“Clever,” Zeb growled. “How'd you get a sample of the Runt's writing to copy?” Zel just rolled his eyes. Zeb got right in his face. “If you think you're going to get an in on Rezo's Treasure, sir, you'd best think again.”

“An in on what?” Zel rubbed his forehead. “Rezo spent every copper he could get his hands on, either on charity or research. Some of the lab equipment might have some resale value, or the books, but I don't need it badly enough to go dig them up, and if I did, I wouldn't need to come here first; I remember where most of it is.” _I'd have to be pretty desperate, though. The people who would want_ those _books are the type who'd rather pay in blood than in gold._

The eyebrows lowered. “Hah! That's what you want us to think.”

“You? Think? When?” _Stop it Zel, you're letting Lina rub off on you._ If this conversation degenerated any further, he'd be tempted to use her preferred method for ending such things: indoor fireballs. _It would be a blessing, really; they'd have an excuse to get rid of that wallpaper._

Xander started up from the corner where he'd been sulking. “How dare you insult my brother, sir!”

“Your brother, Xander, just called your invited guest a 'circus freak.' You did invite me, you recall. I would have been happy to remain at Pikestaff House for the length of my stay here and leave the manse out of it.” Zel forced himself to take a deep breath or two, and then did his best to wrench himself back into Polite Company mode.

“Lady Greywords, the gardens look to have been substantially refurbished since I last saw them ten years ago, is that your work? They look lovely.”

Lady Greywords fluttered a moment and latched onto the new topic of conversation so hard she practically left fingernail dents in it. “Why, thank you! It has been a favorite project of mine, though I can't really take credit for the redesign; mostly I just listened to the Geomancer and planted whatever he told me.” She chattered on, with the Pikestaffs putting in a helpful word or two now and then, until the tension in the room sank to a more manageable level. Xander and Zeb took to sniping at each other, briefly, when Zebulon reiterated his belief that Xander should have left Rezo's herb garden exactly as it had been, and charged admission to the pilgrims.

This allowed Zel to settle into his customary watchful silence and puzzle over a detail or two as they made their way into the dining room. _I'm nowhere near being a qualified Geomancer, but that amount of change to a well-established garden, one that another good Geomancer designed in the first place... that sounds odd. As if there's something specific they're trying to address._ And then there was the unusually high level of self-defense training the children were getting, and the unusually hale and alert gate porter and, now that they were in the dining room, six beefy waiters, one for each of them, standing at attention. Those badges on their livery looked suspiciously like talismans of some kind. _Are all these precautions for my sake, Xander? I'm flattered, really._

Only, Zel didn't think they were. Xander was afraid of something. And he was as quick to squash any notion of capitalizing on Rezo's fame as Zel would have been. Interesting.

The puzzle was not enough to keep his Greywords half-brothers from being irritating, however. Zebulon was a loudmouth and a know-it-all, Xanderbald was vicious and cold, and they both still had it in for Zel. Right now they were reminiscing about Rezo's few visits when they were children, and making mouth about what a high standard of wisdom and excellence was required to live up to the Greywords name. _Self-awareness, however, is entirely optional. Look how long it took _me_ to muster any. _

Since none of their comments were addressed to Zel directly, he decided to ignore them and ate his soup in silence, until Zeb looked in his direction. “Look at the creature! He even eats like a hooligan! His bowl's three-quarters-empty already! What's the matter, afraid someone's going to snatch it from you?”

Zel stood up and slapped both his hands down on the table. Chin down, eyebrows, even voice. The last one wasn't possible this time; the best he could manage was a hiss instead of a bellow. “Actually, Zeb, you're not far wrong. I _am_ a hoodlum. I lifted my first purse off a sleeping bandit when I was thirteen. By fourteen I had progressed to spying, and at fifteen, extortion. I particularly relish the time I told the mayor of a small town that if he didn't cough up the funds for a new public well from out of his bribe money, I was going to tell his mistress about his boyfriend. At sixteen, I was in charge of my own gang of six or seven bandit-hunters...”

“And at seventeen?” Lady Greywords looked as if she couldn't quite help herself. _Reads romance novels, maybe._

Zel stopped leaning on the table and stood up straight, relaxing his shoulders and letting his expression return to neutral. He realized he still had his soup spoon in his hand, and looked at Rezo's crest, stamped into the heavy silver. “At seventeen?” He shrugged. “At seventeen, Rezo turned me into a chimera, and it finally occurred to me to wonder whether his ends justified his means.” He looked at the spoon again and then, mouth working, crumpled it into a ball and let it drop on the table with a dull clank. “I'll see myself out.”

He clasped his mother's shoulder briefly as he strode by, then pushed the curtains that hung behind Xander's seat to one side, shoved open the glass-paneled doors they hid, and made for the gardens. No one, not even the beefy waiters, tried to stop him.

Of course, the downside to making a dramatic exit was that the door that got him out of the house the soonest opened on the wrong side of the manse for getting out the gate quickly. None of the paths from this side went in the right direction, and Zel's plan to just cut across the grounds was thwarted by a water meadow that hadn't been here ten years ago. Doing a Ray Wing seemed like overkill, not to mention the risks of triggering more of Xander's defense measures or getting further disoriented in the deepening dusk. So Zel walked, listening to the running water and the night birds, feeling the rising mist as sparks of cold tingling on his face. The path had patches of iota mint growing between the flagstones; the scent was pleasant. Slowly, Zel relaxed again. If worst came to worst, he'd just keep going until he ran into the outer wall, and either follow it to a gate or levitate over it, depending on how he felt by then. Meanwhile, he'd see if there was still a path from the family cemetery over to the rock garden. They wouldn't have moved the cemetery.

His first warning that there was someone else among the gravestones was a hint of warmth when the breeze shifted direction, barely enough to be noticeable, and then in the next two steps he could hear breathing. “I thought I might find you here,” his mother said.

She was standing facing one of the stones, her head turned in his direction. Zel couldn't make out her expression in the twilight, but her posture and voice were weary.

“Yes,” he agreed, “I wasn't expecting a water meadow where the herbary used to be.”

“I meant, here by Xavier's grave,” she explained.

“Oh.” The idea of visiting it hadn't even occurred to him. Even in the years when he was alive, Baron Xavier Greywords had been more of a concept than a person to his youngest son. An important concept, to be sure: the organizing principle of the household. But not... personal.

“There's a strong resemblance,” Lady Yvonne said, softly.

“What, between me and Father?”

“And your grandfather, and even Xander and Zeb, really. You all had- have- a tendency to... to latch onto things, to put your whole selves into one big purpose, and pursue it single-mindedly. And you all seem to pull in at least one or two loyal followers who are drawn to that sense of purpose and want to serve... Rezo had his healing, Xavier his research, Xander... the family name, I think, or maybe just refurbishing the manse, Zeb and his treasure hunts...”

“Me and my cure,” Zel finished for her, while arguing silently with himself about that “loyal followers” business. Lina hadn't ever followed him. The reverse, if anything. _But Rodimus and Zolf, they died fighting for me. And Amelia..._ He really hated the thought that he had anything like that kind of hold on Amelia. He'd been so careful not to give any kind of encouragement when she'd pursued him, and it did seem as if she'd finally simmered down, but neither had she been showing interest in anyone else, so far as Zel could see. _I should... do something. Find another job. Something._ Only, he liked the job he had. He liked Seyruun... _Making the selfish choice, are we? Know anyone else like that, Zel?_

“Yes, you even more than the others,” Lady Yvonne went on, “because- because-” her breath caught and then she went on in a rush, “because you get it from both sides.” She stared down at the gravestone.

His mother clearly expected this announcement to come as a revelation, but it was pretty old news, really. “I wondered about that,” he told her. “I ran across Great-grandmother Yolande's letters to Rezo up in the attics of the manse, once. I was too young to catch the implications, of course, but I remembered enough to think of it later, when something Rezo said reminded me of them...”

Lady Yvonne puffed out a voiceless laugh. “All these useless secrets...I didn't find out myself until Grandmother was dying, and she told me and Mother. Up until then, I believed she objected to the match between me and Xavier because she thought sixteen was too young to marry a man of forty.”

Zel started. “Wait, _sixteen?_ That would make you younger than Xander.”

“You never realized? I'm actually younger than Zeb by a month or two.”

“... No, I hadn't realized.” If Zel imagined his memory as a workroom, the last few days had been spent riffling through one drawer and another, releasing the scents of dried herbs that hadn't been touched in years. Now, it was as though a wind swept through the room, emptying drawers and sending the contents swirling, and when they landed again, they were sorted into compounds for cough medicine, furniture polish, and love potions. Years ago, one of Rezo's gang had suggested that Xander's enmity toward Yvonne and her son had been born of thwarted desire, and Zel had dismissed the idea. _But maybe Noonsa wasn't clueless after all, rest his slimy soul. And when she met Pikestaff, she was only four years older than I am now. Huh._

“Yes, sixteen,” said Lady Yvonne. “When you talked about your early years with Rezo, you could have been describing my first marriage. Xavier became my whole world. There was a kind of ecstasy in letting myself be... subsumed. He never betrayed me, so far as I know; I didn't realize how... one-sided it all was until I had Darius to compare.”

_Also, you, too, are Rezo's grandchild, and you have the family gift for obsession._ “How did Father die, anyway? No one would ever tell me more than 'it was an accident.'”

Lady Yvonne brushed one hand across the top of the gravestone. “One of his magical experiments went wrong. Xavier was working on long-distance communication, something that would allow messages to move across the Astral plane, so that ships could talk to their home ports and so on. Rezo told us that as far as he could tell, Xavier's soul got stretched too far away from his body, and- and that was the end.” She sucked in a breath through her teeth, a slow hiss.

_Rezo was there when Father died?_ Zel had only a few, dim memories of the funeral; standing by his mother, trying manfully not to fidget, shoals and eddies of adults crowding the usually spacious manse. But... _He performed the funeral rites, didn't he? I don't like the sound of this at all..._ But what did it matter at this point? Rezo, too, was dead, and there was little justice left to be done, always assuming Zel wasn't just being paranoid. 

_Well, as long as I'm here..._ Zel didn't carry much on him that would work as a funerary offering. Even his hair wouldn't burn. Finally, he cut a small piece off the inside hem of his cloak and stamped it with his Ombudsman seal. _Hi, dad, I don't know if you remember me, but I've got a job now..._ Burning the little scrap of cloth took less power than healing a papercut – not that he got those anymore.

Zel stood up, shaking his head, and rubbed his face. “I suppose you walked out on Xander's dinner shortly after I did?”

“Oh, yes, and Darius too. He was going to call for the carriage and round up the children while I went and found you.”

Zel sighed. “I suppose I should probably offer to pay for that damned spoon.”

Lady Yvonne laughed outright, a wicked cackle that wouldn't have been out of place coming from Prince Phil's mouth. “Don't you dare! Xander spent all that money on extra waitstaff, just to put you in your place; he'll just have to deal with one spoon's worth of defiance.”

Zel's head snapped 'round. “Someone's coming."

It was a heavy someone, in boots, in a tearing hurry. The footsteps seemed to advance and retreat as the runner negotiated the winding path toward the cemetery. Zel tapped his mother's elbow and they headed up the same path, briskly but not breaking into a run. He cast Lightning, both to make the way clearer and to signal their presence to the runner. The booted footsteps grew slower and squelchier, but stopped zig-zagging. Whoever it was had left the path to make straight for them. A minute or two later, the man was visible as one of the waiters, red and out of breath. “Lady Pikestaff!” The man gasped, pulling himself into something like a fighter's stance, “Are you all right? He didn't hurt you?”

“What?”

“He means me,” Zel said, flatly.

Lady Yvonne stood upright and glared at the hapless guardswaiter. “Of all the- Can't my poor son even visit his father's grave without you people getting suspicious? Now you just listen to me-”

The man flapped his hands placatingly and shook his head. “Sorry, ma'am. I'm glad you're safe, really I am. We were worried because-” he stopped short, looking back and forth between her and Zel.

“Because why, exactly?”

The waiter gulped. “Ma'am, the children have gone missing, all five of them. The library's all torn up...we thought maybe this one had kidnapped them somehow, and you with them.”


	5. Reading the Library

Lady Yvonne swayed, her eyes gone blank. Zel caught her arm and draped it over his shoulders. They needed to get back to the house before the waiter tried to arrest him. “Hold on tight, Mother. RAY WING!” He pulled them both into the air and in a straight line to the open doors of the manse. Two more of the waiters took charge of Zelgadis as soon as they made landfall . He didn't try to resist; no point arguing anything until he got through to his brothers. 

Lady Yvonne, however, drew herself upright again. “Let him go! He can't have had anything to do with this; he's been with me practically this whole time!” The guards reacted not at all, simply steering them all back toward the parlor. Zel could only hope they would come into contact with some actual information at some point. _How the hell did I get into this mess, anyway? Lina isn't even_ here!

Lady Graywords was half-collapsed on a sofa, weeping. The three men, Xander, Zeb, and Sir Pikestaff, all glared at Zel as he was marched into the room. Pikestaff was only able to maintain the expression for a few seconds before it crumpled into tenderness and he ran forward to take his wife by the hands. Lady Yvonne was having none of it. “Tell me what we know so far,” she snapped.

Zeb roared back. “We know your pet hoodlum and his gang managed to infiltrate the manse somehow and make away with the children!”

One of the guard/waiters had concrete facts: “Nurse left them all playing in the library for, she says, 'just a moment,' though there's considerable doubt about the actual timeline. When she came back, the library was a shambles and the kids were gone. No one has heard or seen anything suspicious, and none of the household were missing except you two.” He jerked his head in the direction of Zel and Lady Yvonne.

_The library, huh? I wonder..._ “I didn't have anything to do with this,” Zel told them all. “If I had, this would be my cue to demand ransom, or just gloat. But I haven't, so I won't. Would you accept my help searching if you had someone trustworthy watching me?” The rest of the family continued to glare at him. “Look, I'm the best mage here. I could do a basic locator spell at least.”

“Ah-HAH!” Xander barked. “And then you'll lead us into a trap, eh? Or maybe you'll bring the kids back safe and sound and make yourself out as a hero and ask for a reward? Or you could give your minder the slip and vanish, or-”

“Oh, Shaddup!” Lady Greywords stood up and delivered a quick clout on her husband's skull. “You can deal with your suspicions after we've got the kids back. If he's in on it, he knows where they are, and if he's not, we'd be stupid not to get his help. Let him do what he wants!” She cast one blazing glance at the guards, and they dropped Zel's arms, hastily.

“Right, then.” Zelgadis pulled his pouch of his belt and dumped the contents on a card table. Normally he would have just rummaged, but this was a bad time to do anything that even looked like being furtive. He pulled out a casting lens and clipped it to a lamp on the table, so that the light passed through the etched pattern and left a shadowy pentacle on the table.

“I'll need three hairs from you, Mother, and two from Lady Greywords, please.”

Lady Yvonne shoved her wimple back impatiently and yanked the hairs loose from her braids with some violence. Lady Greywords, more circumspect, reached under the back of her veil and rootled discreetly. Zel took the hairs one at a time, coiling each one and laying it in one of the star points, and then activated his spell. 

The lines of shadow glowed with blue light for a moment, and the five hairs sprang together into the center of the star and twined themselves around each other. Zel reached in and plucked out the resulting braid, winding it around his dowsing crystal, then looked up at the assembled company. “Leave the circle there for the time being. The hairs all joining like that means the kids are all still together, wherever they are. And now I'd like a look at the library.”

The library, when they got there, was indeed a shambles. There were books everywhere, pulled off the shelves and scattered hither and yon, along with most of a deck of playing cards. Chairs were overturned, and one stood upright, but behind the sofa and draped in a rug. Another rug, in a corner, was rucked up against itself as though it had been pushed aside.

For all that, though, there was something off about the room as the scene of an abduction. Zelgadis slowly paced around, ignoring the dowsing crystal for now since the kids had been here an hour or more and the traces were muddled and layered on top of each other. None of the lamps had been damaged at all, nor the vases of flowers on the heavy tables. He picked up the rug draped over a chair- had someone been trying to wrap one of the kids in it? Three chess pieces sat on the chair under the rug. Kneeling next to the chair, he spotted two more chess pieces, each tented under one of the books that was standing open and spine-up on the floor. Puzzled, he sat back on his heels, looking around the room again from a child's height. The one book in the room with a proper bookmark (well, a playing card) a few pages in was _Deeds of the Archmages._ Zel nearly laughed. When he found the extra Ace of Dragons among the other playing cards, he did laugh.

“We've got this all wrong,” he announced. “Most of this mess is from the kids themselves; I'm not sure there were intruders at all. Look.” He draped the rug back over the chair, and then tucked one end into the sofa cushions, making a small, triangular tent. “Gully was playing house, and probably Zenobia with her. They made extra houses for the chess pieces out of upended books.” He gathered up four tented books, revealing a collection of pawns and a White Priest.

“Meanwhile,” he went on, “One of Pikestaff's boys – probably Dmitri because he's shorter – decided to find a book I told them about earlier.” He held up _Deeds of the Archmages_ and stacked it, along with the books that had housed chess pieces, on the nearest table. “Unfortunately, that book is usually kept up here -” he tapped a shelf, “within sight but out of reach for someone Dmitri's size. Unless you've reorganized lately?” He looked at Xander, who shook his head. “So. Dmitri tried to pull a table over to stand on,” Zel pointed at the rucked-up rug, “but it was too heavy. So he grabbed a chair instead,” Zel tilted it upright, “and when that wasn't quite enough he stacked a couple books on the seat.” Volumes R-Z of the _Encyclopedia Clairesque_ were restored to the seat of the chair. Volume Z had a clear footprint on its rear cover. Zel moved back to the scattered card game.

“The sequence isn't quite so clear over here... either one of the boys realized the other one was cheating,” he laid the two aces on the table, “Or else they just got bored, saw Dimitri mucking around with the furniture, and decided that looked like more fun. Possibly they knocked him off his chair and he hung onto the shelf,” Zel pointed to another footprint, on the door of a cabinet, “Or possibly they just decided to start climbing on the shelves for the sport of the thing.” He pointed at other places where the books were shoved back or sideways, and two more hand and footprints. “Eventually,” Zel reached up and pulled at the carved cornice on the edge of the bookshelf, “One of them triggered the mechanism for the hidden door.” Slowly, clanking, the shelves swung away from the wall, knocking over the chair with the Encyclopedias all over again. Zel finally turned to face his audience.

Baron Xanderbald laughed in relief. “I'd forgotten all about the siege tunnel! Well done!” 

Zebulon, face nearly as purple as his hair, spun and howled at his brother. “You knew about this? And you never told me?” 

Xander didn't have time to answer before the door started to close again, and a high voice shrieked, “No!” from the tunnel. A moment later, a dusty, tearstained Zenobia hurtled up the steps, through the narrowing gap, and straight into her mother's skirts. “I got lost!” she sobbed, “I thought the g-ghost would get me!”

Zelgadis triggered the door again, and grabbed another book (checking to make sure it wasn't too rare), which he wedged between the false cornice and the edge of the shelf to keep the door standing open. Xander, his face more gentle than Zel had ever seen, knelt by his weeping daughter. “Where are the others, honey?”

“I don't kno-ho-hoooww!” she wailed, “they were all running around and it was dark and scary and...” she buried her face again.

Lady Yvonne's shoulders relaxed, but the worry lines stayed on her forehead. “What exactly is down there?” she asked, “Are the children in any danger?”

Zelgadis thought he heard the word “ghost” from the sobbing Zenobia, but the girl's father shook his head. “It's one rough tunnel with a few doglegs and several dead ends branching off, dating back to the Battle of Red Keep, before the Manse was even built. The siegers were trying to dig under the wall and the defenders were trying for a counter-tunnel, following the sounds of the enemies' picks. Neither side managed to break through before the Water Dragon King showed up and rendered the whole question moot. There's nothing worse waiting down there than a few bruises from the uneven footing.”

“Why have a secret door at all?” Lady Yvonne persisted.

Xander shrugged. “I'm told Grandfather Rezo found the idea amusing.”

Zel watched one hair separate itself from the five that clung to the spinning dowsing crystal. _That would be Zenobia's._ Without looking up, he said, “Actually, Rezo had a lab down there. A small one. I only saw it once; it was sealed off well enough that there shouldn't be any danger of the kids find-”

Zebulon grabbed Zel's arm and dragged him along into the general stampede for the tunnel door. Only Lady Greywords, Zenobia, and the waiter stayed behind. Zel could hear Lady Greywords as he headed down the steps: “I'll fire that stupid nurse first thing in the morning... no, tonight, no... in the morning...”

Everyone regrouped at the bottom of the steps, where Xander and Sir Pikestaff bellowed the children's names, insisting they come at once. No one came, and any answer was lost in the echos of their own voices. 

“Well,” said Lady Yvonne, briskly hiking up her skirts, “I guess we go looking. Do we break up, or stick together?”

“Stick together,” all four men answered at once. Zel started the Lightning gesture but his mother stopped him. “I'll handle that. You keep an eye on your locator spell.”

“I'd better go first, then.”

“Don't get too far ahead of the rest of us,” Xander warned.

“I'll go back upstairs,” sighed Sir Pikestaff. “I can't do magic and that floor will be Hell on my bad knee.”

“I'll take Rearguard,” Zeb offered. Zelgadis wondered if he thought the waiter was suddenly going to rush down and attack them. Zeb started to draw his sword, compared the length of the sword to the width of the tunnel, reconsidered, and pulled out a pair of daggers instead. “Right, then.”


	6. Under the Manse

Possibly, if it hadn't been for all these anxious parents following behind, shuffling the soles of their shoes on the damp stone and _breathing,_ Zel would have been able to get some sense of direction out of the faint, echoing snatches of voice he could just barely pick up on. _“oot... too... oot...”_ As it was, all he could really do was watch the dowsing crystal, which stopped spinning clockwise and started spinning counterclockwise when the first dead-end side passage opened to their right. His mother shone a light down the passageway anyway, but even from where they were they could see that it was empty to its end. _“edafloot...eidatoo...”_ there was a kind of rhythm to the – _NOT ghostly; don't even think ghostly_ – elusive, high, voice, as if it were reciting poetry, or chanting a spell, or...

“Dmitri's reciting tongue-twisters,” Zel announced. “I think they're -” The dowsing crystal caught a sudden flash from Lady Yvonne's light spell and scattered tiny rainbows all over the entrance to the next side passage. “Yep, looks like it's this way.”

“WE'RE COMING, KIDS!” Zebulon bellowed from behind, making everyone wince. Zelgadis tried to pick up the pace without tripping on the rough-hewn floor or banging his head. This was the tunnel that led to the lab. There shouldn't be any way for the kids to be able to break the seal that hid it, but...

“ _A tooter who tooted a flute / Tried to tutor two tooters to toot..._ ” They rounded the first bend. _“Said the two to the tutor,..”_ Why was Dmitri the only one saying anything? For that matter, why weren't any of them moving this way? _“Is it harder to toot, or-”_ They rounded the next bend and the air abruptly went cold.

“What...”

“Ghosts,” Zel hissed. _Of course there's a ghost. We can't have Xander being right about there not being any ghosts here... Damn, but I wish Amelia was with us..._ He shouted, “You're doing very well, Dmitri! Keep it up!” If the boy concentrated hard enough on his recitation, he could actually resist at least a weak psychic attack. The ghost or ghosts wouldn't be able to fool his mind into cooperating with it. Which, unfortunately, still left other options.

“OR TO TUTOR TWO TOOTERS TO TOOT?!!” Dmitri screamed back at them, “A TOOTER WHO TOOTED A FLUTE...”

They rounded the last bend and were only a foot or two from the end of the tunnel, where the doorway to Rezo's lab stood revealed and _of course, why should any of this be easy?_ wide open, glowing with a stuttering blue-white light. Zel stopped short at the threshold, the others piling up behind him, and took stock.

Compared to the monstrosities he'd built at Sairaag and elsewhere, Rezo's lab under the manse was small and utilitarian: an irregular oblong shape maybe twelve feet across at its widest point. The magic circle inscribed in the floor was no larger than the average campfire. The back wall, where a worktable/desk sat, was hung with relatively mundane tools, like silk handkerchiefs (now starting to rot with age) and golden calipers. The children were backed up against, and, in the cases of Gully and Zeke, under, this desk. The stuttering light proved to be the work of Asmir, who was casting Lightning over and over again, every few seconds, as his brother recited. _A gift for single-minded concentration..._ Both the boys looked to be a the ragged edge of their endurance, though. It was clearly time to get everyone back up into the house. _Too bad the ghost is blocking the way to the door._

The thing really did look a bit like Zelgadis; he understood now why Zeke and Zenobia had run the first time they saw him. Its flapping, nearly colorless cape could have been white. The hands and head glowed blue, the hair even more so. The typical Greywords forelocks curled up until they looked less like wings and more like horns, or flames. Lines of power crackled around it, and it was floating toward the children, its hands reaching inhumanly far. And it was speaking. Its voice seemed to bounce off the walls of the cave without having an origin point.

“It's your duty to serve your ancestors,” the ghost chided. “I'd do anything for my father. I need your help.” The hands flowed toward Asmir's terrified, teary face.

Zel took a few steps into the lab. Maybe he could make his way to the desk and shield the children. “Asmir!” he shouted, “Stop trying to cast spells and help your brother. Come on, now- 'Tom's thumb's thinner than Tim's thumb...' “ 

“...Th-thus Tim's thumb's thicker than Tom's,” Asmir whimpered, and screwed his eye's shut.

_If only Amelia were here, with her shrine maiden powers. If only this were one of the big labs, where I could get a clear shot at this thing without putting the kids in danger._ Too many of the big attack spells worked just as well on humans as they did on anything else. That left... “ASTRAL VINE!”

The ghost chuckled and pulled itself down through the circle on the floor like water down a drain, and then popped out again as soon as the power dissipated. “I'm already bound,” it announced smugly, “My father is a great man...”

Damn. Anything more powerful than Astral Vine could call down too much damage for this small space. There were no good moves left. _Which leaves the really, really stupid ones..._

Zel took another few steps along the wall, circling, trying to get between the ghost and the kids, or at least get its attention. He filled his lungs, tried to ready himself... “Papa!” he cried, “It's Zelgadis! If you need something, take it from me!”

Near silence reigned for two heartbeats. Lady Yvonne gasped, but didn't make any move to interfere. Xander tried to regain control through the familiar medium of outrage. “THAT can't be Father! It's not possible! Rezo the Red Priest performed the burial rites himself!”

Keeping his eyes on the ghost, still trying to circle toward the desk, Zel answered, “Rezo's the one that killed him.” It was possible that the man's death had really been accidental and Rezo had simply taken advantage of the chance to bind the spirit, but Zel wasn't betting on it.

The ghost turned his way at last, revealing bloody hollows where its eyes and heart had been gouged out. “My father is a great man,” it repeated. 

“He still wronged you, though,” Zel countered, one hand on the hilt of his sword, “didn't he, Papa? He said you owed him everything, because you were his son, but he didn't act much like a father. Did he.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Lady Yvonne gesturing frantically. Furtive rustles from the direction of the desk suggested that the kids were trying to sneak away, now that the ghost wasn't focused on them. Zel stayed focused on the ghost. “Rezo betrayed you. You don't owe him anything more.”

The ghost hissed, “Zelgadisss...” Zelgadis braced himself for an attack, but then the ghost... subsided. The hair flattened down, the hands returned to the normal shape for human hands. Its eye sockets squinched themselves half-shut, as if the ghost were weeping. “Zelgadisss... you... believe me?”

“I believe you.”

“Nobody would believe me... my father is a great man... he would never hurt me... I would do anything for him...”

“I believe you,” Zel repeated.

“So do I,” declared Lady Yvonne, stepping through the doorway, “I believe you, Xavier.”

“I believe you,” added Xander, following her, and Zeb, still in the doorway, howled “Me too-hoo-hoooo,” his streaming eyes echoing the shape of the ghost's.

“Listen, Papa,” Zel said, “Rezo is dead now. His body is dust, even his spirit is ended. You don't have to serve him any more. You're free.”

The ghost shook its head, its whole body wavering. “Bound,” it sighed, and suddenly there were chains visible at its wrists and at the bottom of its robes, stretching away into nothing. “Bound to nine circles, under nine stones, in nine cities. My father is a great man, I would do anything for him. He needs me to search the Worlds Beyond, where the living see only dimly, to find the light that will let him see... he needs me to come to the stones when he calls, and tell him what I see... I was going to tell him... Yaivkach, in the far West... the City of Mind holds the old secrets, the Carrion Gyre breaks stone wheels... nine stones, nine cities...”

“What does he mean?” Xander hissed.

“Rezo bound his spirit to serve him,” Zel murmured back, still watching. There was a scuttling noise and Asmir sped for the door and out into the tunnel. The other kids still seemed to be staying put. “He's searching the spirit world for a cure for Rezo's blindness, while Rezo himself searched our world. And he has to come back when he's summoned.”

“Nine circles, under nine stones, in nine cities,” the ghost confirmed, “Sairaag was destroyed, so that leaves.... eight... Sairaag, and here, and... and the other ones... I forget the names...”

“So we have to find and destroy those stones to free him?”

“Unless the shrine maidens have someone powerful enough to break bindings that Rezo laid. I can't think of anyone in my acquaintance – well, one, but she's evil. What I can't figure out, though,” Zel went on, “is how tonight happened. Why is the lab accessible, and who summoned him here?” _Did some of those disgruntled pilgrims make it this far, somehow?_

“All I said,” Zeke protested from under the desk, “was 'come out, come out wherever you are.' and I didn't mean him.”

“Me, too,” Gully piped up.

“Rezo's blood, Rezo's magic, Rezo's line...” The ghost chanted, then stopped.

Zelgadis sighed. “So maybe there's just enough of Rezo's legacy and just enough accumulated magic when you get all four-was Zenobia here before she got away? Five, then, of the kids in one place to trigger the seals.” A daunting thought in its own right, that one.

“Oh, well!” Zebulon had bounced from tears to a nearly Seyruuni level of ebullience. “No one's getting murdered tonight, anyway! All we have to do is organize a trip around Rezo's old stomping grounds and find those other stones to get Dad out of that mess he's in. I'll rustle up a ship in the morning. You in, Zel?” 

Zelgadis thought about it. Wandering from city to city, acting on the slenderest of clues. Facing whatever Rezo had left behind to discourage intruders near the binding stones. For months. With Zeb. He sighed. “Sure, why not? I even know some people who might be helpful. If I can get hold of them. And if we can afford the catering bill.”

“I could chip in something,” Xander offered.

The ghost sniffed, sentimentally. “You're good kids.”

Gully crawled out from under the desk at last. “Excuse me,” she said, “Excuse me mister ghost, do you want a hug?”

“Gully!” Lady Yvonne gasped, but his half-sister, as Zel had previously observed, was fast. By the time their mother had called the second syllable of her name, she had run up and clasped her arms around the ghost's insubstantial robes at knee height. She and the ghost both began to glow brighter: white, and then golden. The gaping hole over the ghost's heart closed up, and then lids formed over its eye sockets, which opened...

The ghost whispered, “Oh!” the chains on its wrists dissolved, and the light grew stronger. “Wait!” the ghost cried, “I almost forgot! Zel, go to the City of Mind, in the West! Seyruun needs _wudun_ before it falls in the sea... Zeb, try the desert...emeralds...Xander, I'm...proud... of...y-” it was gone.

“Holy Cephied in a dungcart,” Zeb swore reverently. 

Gully stood in the empty circle, blinking, and then burst into tears and roared over to Lady Yvonne, Dmitri on her heels. “I was so scared!”

“Oh, darlings! What am I going to do with you?” Lady Yvonne wrapped her arms around her two youngest children, while Zeke ran to his father. Baron Xanderbald swung his son up in the air, wrapped him in a hug, set him down again, and turned to look at Zel.

“Thanks, Runt,” he said.


	7. Epilogue

_To Zelgadis Greywords_   
_Seyruun Castle,_   
_Seyruun City, Seyruun_

Dear son,

Please pass on our thanks to the Princess for her kind letter to the Temple Head; he has been much more reasonable about Gully's shrine maiden training since it arrived. In all honesty, I was tempted to withdraw altogether because of his behavior, but the Novice Mistress who is actually in charge of the girls has real understanding, as well as the nerve to call the Head a stuffed shirt to his face, and in front of me. Gully seems to be enjoying herself so far. Darius and Zeb have not yet found any emeralds in the desert, but Darius is thinking about starting a winery. I will not give you the boys' news, since they wrote separately, as you can see from the enclosed.

With regards to the question you asked in your last letter, or rather, the question you danced around without ever asking directly, I don't know if there are any easy answers. To judge by my own experience, falling in love with someone (or “exercising the family talent for obsession toward a specific person,” as you so gloomily put it) can lead to collateral damage if it blinds you to the world around you, just as any other, more selfish form of dedication can. Yet when I compare my mistakes to Xavier's, or Rezo's, I still feel that I made a better use of that gift than they did, and I still wish the same for you. I can also recommend that you make sure some of your friends are ready to pull you back into the wider world, by main force if necessary, when you are drawn in too deep. I suppose my final piece of advice to you on the matter would be to stop trying to guard your own dignity when writing to your mother, who, whatever her mistakes have been, still remembers wiping your childhood tears away, and is all too happy to hear you out without all this waffling.

Yours, etc. 

 

_To the Lady Dowager Yvonne Greywords-Pikestaff,_   
_Pikestaff House,_   
_Grey Harbor, Camazind_

 

Dear everybody,

Thank you for your last letter. Gully, I have your picture pinned to my workdesk here in Seyruun Castle. Dmitri, congratulations on mastering Diem Wing. The local expert here asks me to tell you that the most important part is to make sure of your footing when you land, and adjust your Victory Pose accordingly; only really, posing isn't quite as needful as she seems to think it is. Asmir, I told you already: no. Not until you're sixteen, at least. If you want to go traveling before that, you can see if your Uncle Zeb has a berth for you. Or you can focus on the horse training for a few years and have the means to make a living when you do leave town, which is the course I recommend.

I'm writing to warn you all that I may be heading out of communication again for a year or two; I passed the warning Xavier's ghost gave me on to Prince Phil, along with a few other things I learned on my own, and he has decided to send another expedition into the Outlands, to a different region than the usual routes and further away. I am to be included in the party that goes. I may be able to send a word or two during the first months of the journey, but not after that. I'm sure you'll all continue well in my absence, as you did before, and if Fitz the Face shows up again I trust you'll deal with him appropriately.

Regards,

Zel

**Author's Note:**

> They said, “write what you know,” so I wrote about a cranky introvert at a family reunion...
> 
> Here's a chronology/family tree in case you got confused:
> 
> About 60 years back, Rezo sired two children: Xavier, by his wife, and Yvonne's mother, by “Great-Grandmother Yolande,” who was married to someone else at the time. As an adult, Xavier either took on the title of Baron when Rezo renounced it in favor of wandering, or possibly was awarded the title in his own right by a local prince. Xavier married and had two sons, Xander and Zeb, shortly before Yvonne was born. The first Mrs. Xavier died, and Xavier married Yvonne, without either of them knowing she was his niece, when she and her stepsons were all in their teens. Xavier and Yvonne had Zelgadis; Xavier died when Zel was 10 and the widowed Yvonne married Darius Pikestaff after a whirlwind courtship. Zel started learning magic from Rezo when he was 11 and Asmir was born about then. Zel left with Rezo's gang at 12, shortly after Dmitri's birth, and kept in sporadic contact (letters and one or two visits) with the Pikestaff branch of the family until he and Rezo parted ways five years later, at which point the Slayers series happened. In this story, Zel is 22.


End file.
